For the record, "Starships" is a great pop song -- that's it. It was a good business move to market Nicki Minaj as a crossover artist. The crux of the matter, is you have to "sell out" to become a crossover artist. All that hardcore shit she was doing is album filler at this point. Her value is now in her crossover potential. They're trying to create the hip-hop Madonna/Lady Gaga and they're successfully doing it.
The fact of the matter is, you have to focus on worldwide sales in order to capitalize financially on the popularity of the song in this day and age. Sales are market-agnostic. In today's music industry climate, she was almost forced to sell out if she wanted to become a very profitable artist for her label.
This type of song appeals to a wide range of demographics, including the international audience. I bet kids in South Korea are singing this song and know the words, but do you think they would have ever heard one of her hardcore rap songs?
If the artist doesn't continue to produce a profit for the label, she will be dropped. A lot of times this type of crossover bullshit is necessitated because you have to show your revenue generating value to the label. This in turn, gives her as an artist more bargaining power.
The whole YMCMB bullshit about how they're a "family" is just that -- bullshit. As soon as she's not producing revenue and falls off, that family will turn on her.
Good for her in getting fame, money (hopefully) and recognition. I hope she's saving all her money in the bank.
This isn't new shit I'm telling you, but the music business is tough these days. An artist like her would have probably sold 15 million records. Now she's lucky to get several million downloads and some revenue off other digital assets.
The game has changed guys, the industry is populated by a bunch of old motherfuckers who clearly don't get it or are holding out to the older (more profitable) business model for as long as possible.
Example, here's the douchebag Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel acting like a complete dumbass at a tech conference where all the techies that are fucking up his industry are trying to call him out on his bullshit:
Click on the video, this is an offshoot website of the Wall Street Journal:
http://allthingsd.com/20120530/pira...dfunding-ari-emanuel-lets-loose-at-d10-video/